Category Archives: evolutionary psychology

Evolutionary biology gets squeezed from both the Right (many of whose adherents simply deny evolution) and now from the Left as well. A moiety of the Left, as I’ve written here frequently, has ideological reasons for attacking parts of evolutionary biology, especially those parts that involve genetics and behavior. So, for example, we see these […]

Since Andrew Sullivan has moved to New York Magazine, I find him more liberal, more tempered, more rational, and more readable. His three-part essay this week is notable for what he says in the first part: “#MeToo and the Taboo Topic of Nature” Don’t be put off by the title: it’s really a discussion of […]

If I was the late Andy Rooney, I’d say “You know what really bothers me? When science shows some facts about nature, and then someone rejects those facts because they’re inconvenient or uncomfortable for their ideology.” Indeed, when people ignore such inconvenient truths, it not only makes their cause look bad, but can produce palpable harm. Case in point: […]

Last week I published a post intended to show that the profound sexual dimorphism for human size (and musculature) reflected sexual selection in our ancestors, a form of selection that can be explained only by an evolved difference in behavior: in humans, as in many other species in which females invest more in reproduction than do males, […]

One distressing characteristic of the Left, at least as far as science is concerned, is to let our ideology trump scientific data; that is, some of us ignore biological data when it’s inimical to our political preferences. This plays out in several ways: the insistence that race doesn’t exist (and before you accuse me of saying that races […]

Michael Moore has taken out after men on his Twi**er feed; here’s a sample of three in order of posting: The day can't come soon enough when women will take charge. Public policy will not be decided by dick pix, Tic Tacs, grab-assers or the GOP. — Michael Moore (@MMFlint) October 29, 2016 No women […]

As a biologist, I’ve learned that there are two related issues that are taboo for academics to discuss openly. The first is the issue of “races”—or genetic differences between human populations. Cultural anthropologists tell us that races are “social constructs.” Well, there’s a bit of truth in that, insofar as there is no finite number of […]

There’s a new paper in Nature about the level of intraspecific violence in humans and other species, written by José Maria Gómez et al. (free reference and download below). The question is how often members of single species kill each other in the wild, and whether humans are outliers. It’s already gotten a lot of attention in the press, […]

When someone sent me the title of this Slate piece, “Why do we idolize chimps when we could be imitating feminist bonobos?“, I was sure it was a parody—perhaps from The Onion. But no, I don’t think so—or else it’s parody that isn’t good because it’s so close to seeming real without a hint that it’s […]

Walking to the store the other day, I found myself bored and unable to brain. Then a woman passed me wearing sandals (it’s summer up here, after all) and bright red toenail polish. That gave me something to do: I decided to count the colors on the feet of all the women who passed me […]